Food and Technology Blog

10 environmental injustices from IPCC report on climate impacts

Posted Apr. 7, 2014 / Posted by: Luisa Abbott Galvao

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change launched the second installment of its Fifth Assessment Report detailing the findings of Working Group II, which focuses on the impacts of climate change and outlines future risks and adaptation strategies. The report makes it evident that that the impacts of climate change are reflective of grave injustices, with the poorest and most at risk people and countries more acutely affected by a predicament they had little role in causing.

The impacts of climate change are already being felt, in disproportionate degrees by already vulnerable communities. Reducing vulnerability to climate change requires not only the concerted effort of the world’s wealthiest countries to reduce emissions, but urgent attention to systemic inequalities between and within countries that hinder mitigation efforts. Read 10 reasons why climate change is an environmental injustice.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization to coordinate and lead the international community in assessing climate change. As an intergovernmental body currently comprising 195 member countries, it neither conducts research nor monitors indicators of climate change, but rather reviews the most current scientific, socio-economic and technical information being generated by thousands of experts worldwide. As such, the work of the organization is not intended to dictate policy, and reflects more fundamentally a consensus on the recognized validity of the scientific knowledge contained in its yearly updates.